Announcements and statements from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc. The SCV was founded in 1896 to honor and preserve the history and heritage of Confederate soldiers, sailors and marines.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Law Regarding Street Names May Change

Law requiring Confederate street names
questioned

The Associated Press

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Alexandria, a Northern Virginia city steeped in Civil War
history, is considering repeal of an old law requiring certain new streets to be
named for Confederate generals.
City Councilman Justin Wilson introduced legislation for Tuesday night's
council meeting to do away with a 1963 law requiring that any new "streets
running in a generally north-south direction shall, insofar as possible, bear
the names of confederate military leaders."

Wilson's bill also would eliminate a requirement that new east-west streets
be named for persons or places prominent in American history.

Wilson said he wants to remove a series of anachronistic laws, and his
proposal also would repeal a ban on "lewd cohabitation" and laws regulating a
bygone fad of "rebound tumbling," a form of trampolining.

As a practical matter, there is little likelihood that the city will be
naming new streets any time soon. The city, inside Washington's Capital Beltway
and separated from the nation's capital by the Potomac River, is essentially
built out. In fact, the street grid of the city's Old Town section dates to
Colonial times.

Wilson said that symbolically, he believes it's a good thing to strip from
the code a provision that in some ways glorifies the Confederacy. But he made
clear he is not proposing that the city change existing street names, some of
which honor Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson
Davis and Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney, whose Dred Scott decision denied
citizenship and constitutional protections to blacks before the Civil War."I think we struggle in the city with our history," Wilson said.

Alexandria was occupied by Union troops for most of the Civil War and, like
the rest of Virginia, has a history of slavery and segregation. It is now a
liberal bastion in Virginia — Barack Obama won 71 percent of the vote in
2012.

On historic Duke Street in Old Town, the building that was once home to the
nation's largest domestic slave trading company is now home to the Northern
Virginia Urban League, which operates the Freedom House Museum there to tell the
story of the slave trade.

Cynthia Dinkins, president and CEO of the Northern Virginia Urban League,
said she personally supports any legislation that keeps the city from unduly
honoring the Confederacy. Still, while she is wary of glorifying the
Confederacy, she said care must be taken remember unpleasant parts of American
history. "Some of my challenge in dealing with Freedom House is that people don't want
to remember" that part of our history, she said.

Wilson said he has not heard of any opposition to his bill so far.

Officers with the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which has occasionally
protested when it sees efforts to scrub recognition of Confederate leaders from
the public square, did not return emails and phone calls seeking comment
Tuesday.